I've owned two ati machines. For both of them, ati grew tired of supporting them long before I was done with the hardware. Now I have a laptop that works great except for its worthless ati video card. The open source driver is so slow it is worthless and the closed source one doesn't support a modern x11 server.

When I upgraded my PC I used the old parts to build an XBMC HTPC. The old MB was perfect because it had onboard video, audio, ethernet so it didn't require any cards (super low profile).

The onboard video was an ATI Radeon HD 4xxx and a pain in the butt. I couldn't just make a bootable thumbdrive as > Ubuntu 12.04 wouldn't support that card. And the XBMC version that was bundled with 12.04 had other issues.

Your post does not have the ring of truth. I have been using open source Radeon drivers for years, without issue. Performance is good enough that the pain of switching back to binary never seems worth it.

Some years ago we played a bit of Left4Dead (on Windows), it ran well at 800x600 on a buddy's RV370 - Radeon X300SE, it used to be a highly common card. ATI dropped support because it's based on the Radeon 9700's architecture, which was several years old at that point.

You sound unfortunate. I guess if I bought one of these high spec items and had trouble then I could call tech support and get the explanation about the weak QC and an apology and immediate RMA for something that does what it says.

- AMD's open driver is in *awesome* shape in latest 3.13, 3.12 brought the biggest improvements.- AMD has been invested millions in open projects like Gallium3D, Mesa, etc to improve their drivers.- AMD has been released specs for their hardware since 2006.

Another factor that might be pushing vendors to provide information to open source developers and/or publishing open source drivers is the fallout from the Snowden revelations.

People worldwide have awakened to the possibility that malware may be imbedded in closed drivers and firmware (including closed "binary blobs" embedded in open-source drivers). Indeed, it WAS imbedded in some - and sold as a feature. (Example: Intel's AMT, early versions of which lived in and ran from the Ethernet interface firmwar

I have an NVIDIA graphic card that goes back a few years, and NVIDIA still supports it and updates the drivers. I have an AMD/ATI graphics card that is significantly less old, and they do not support it, as the drivers are dated. I have called AMD a few times about this and wrote to them, but they brush it off. I want to see AMD/ATI pick up the slack and support their products. Then I will keep buying them.

Indeed, this is what we find with the free Radeon drivers that support all sorts of old and modern hardware while at the same time, will automagically work on a modern OS.

Or we find that AMD has made hardware which has never been supported on Linux by any driver, like the R690M/X1250. When it was brand new fglrx claimed that it was too old to be supported, and the free driver has always had display corruption on it which has only gotten worse over the years. I won't even consider buying AMD graphics until that machine is supported; I still have it, and I run Vista on it because that's what came with it. Odds are it will never be supported, and I will never buy another AMD gr

Oh really? Wait, no, it only lasts as long as the developers stay interested. As soon as they come up with something different to work on you're 'impeding progress' by still wanting to use the older system. How many times does the init system need to be replaced? Don't like systemd? Tough, unless you're using Slackware or Gentoo. Don't like GRUB2? Tough. Don't like Wayland? You're a Luddite and won't matter soon anyway (I expect xorg to stop developing X11 when Wayland is released).

I've been using nVidia cards on my Linux workstations for many years.
Well, I recently found out the hard way that Xinerama is broken on any driver version after 319. Ouch.
And has been for the last 9 months and with no response from nVdia. Double ouch.
Thumbs down.

Hey, I'm a Nouveau developer and I had a chance to discuss with an nvidia engineer @ FOSDEM. This collaboration is strictly limited to Tegra and on the kernel side (at least for the moment).

There is some overlap with the desktop cards (mostly Kepler family) which will allow us to benefit of this collaboration in more than the SoC world. This is however very interesting and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it will pan out!

It's not news that nVidia will never be able to release full information on their legacy lines. They're encumbered by having got into bed with Microsoft. They tied their cards closely to DirectX and they'll never escape. The Tegra product is a wholly separate line not tainted by that relationship.

That doesn't excuse G+ use (the first link actually caught me off guard...me and my stupid blind-clicking), but he doesn't see himself as so much of a strict FOSS advocate, so you probably see why he wouldn't give as much of a crap

"Although not released until 1992 due to legal complications, development of 386BSD, from which NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD descended, predated that of Linux. Linus Torvalds has said that if 386BSD had been available at the time, he probably would not have created Linux.[32]"

A 386 BSD *had* "existed" but it's future was cloudy due to lawsuit. Had the timing of those legal questions been more favorable, there would be no Linux today.

The project had weak leadership and a huge amount of infighting, which is the real reason 3 different *BSDs forked out of it. Its quite possible Torvolds looked at the BSD mailinglists and said "forget them!"

Torvalds has said in the past something about that he doesn't want to associate with "free software" (or at least FSF) types because they're so "extreme" or such (can't find a link sorry).

This [lkml.org] probably isn't the link that you were referring to but in the discussion around GPLv3 he does mention that Linux has always been Open Source as opposed to Free Software and the FSF evangelizing Linux as a free software project is not something he advocates.

The issue with GPLv3 was that it would have rendered the Linux kernel toxic. It would have precluded its use in embedded devices, appliances, set top boxes etc., it would have prevented binary blob drivers and it would have been nigh on impossible to do anyway given all the contributions by individuals and companies. So they left it the way it was. I expect even if Linus had tried to impose it (and fortunately he is too pragmatic for that), the kernel would have instantly forked from the pre-GPLv3 version a

it would have been nigh on impossible to do anyway given all the contributions by individuals and companies.

"Or any later version"

Only if the authors specifically used that license, the default for the kernel is GPLv2 only. And it's not a democracy, if authors refuse or can't be located or are dead with no heirs to manage the estate the only safe way would be to totally write out those patches. Some have suggested various "abandonware" or "implied by contributing" theories to give the project authority to relicense but it'd be a legal landmine field. For example USC 17506(d): "Fraudulent Removal of Copyright Notice. - Any person who,

No, this was addressed years ago when the GPLv3 draft was first released:

The "version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version"
language in the GPL copying file is not - and has never been - part of the
actual License itself. It's part of the _explanatory_ text that talks
about how to apply the license to your program, and it says that _if_ you
want to accept any later versions of the GPL, you can state so in your
source code.

Well he's somewhere on the half way between BSD and FSF. BSD people care about usage (open, proprietary, doesn't matter), FSF people care about freedom (abiltiy to fix it yourself). Linus cares about the source code and the project. He doesn't care that Tivo locks down their machine as long as he gets any improvements they make so he can roll it into his own kernel and run it on his machine. Linus doesn't like the GPLv3, Linus doesn't like the BSD license, he likes the GPLv2 no more and no less. What he wan

Google+, despite what a lot of people think, is very popular for companies to utilize for work projects. Hangouts is a great way to create conference calls, and since its tied into your other Google services like Drive, you can pretty much use it as a company intranet. I have been a contractor for companies that had employees across the states, and most of them have used G+ in the way I described. I would simply be added to a hangout for meetings with the team, they would place the files I needed access to on Drive and then there was little risk of me getting access to more critical business stuff. I was also part of a contracting team that just had a G+ page, and we would meet with clients in the exact same way. I personally didn't like this method, as I prefer to have more face time with clients, but it seemed to work well as a free platform to do business.

If we assume that the Linux team does something similar, its probably easy for Linus to get his ideas across on a social media platform where a decent portion of his development community lives. I have seen many ex-Google friends follow this same trend when they leave Google and create their start-ups. Chris Messina do it with NeonMob, as well as a few others that I met at Plus20. I cannot say this is necessarily the single best method, but it might be that they don't like FB, Twitter's limitations make it harder to utilize in this manner, so G+ is the next best place to put your ideas down for a large user base to view.

I'm on Google+, as my only Google product, and it does the job and seems to work. I'm not sure why people hate it, except for the Facebook fans who think everyone must be there or be nowhere.

Its not the facebook fans that hate it.

Its the people who have seen the abuse that things like facebook have done to violate people's privacy.To date we have only Google's word that the only thing they will do with your Plus data is serve you ads.

But intelligent people realize this is a hollow promise, one that can be violated by Google themselves, or any randomhacker that manages to penetrate Google's security, or any random NSA agent that wants to gen up a letter.

When one of these copycat services, provides public/private key encryption capabilities with the server sidenot knowing your private key, let me know. But in the meantime, I trust regular old email (encrypted where necessary)more than a central repository in the hands of a third party that can't make any money without selling somethingto me, or breaking their promise and selling me to someone else After all, once you agree to gopublic with a Plus profile, you've essentially surrendered the last vestige of your privacy.

Oh I use email. I'm not putting up anything on G+ that I would want to hide from the entire world. Though it is problematic at time. Such as the android phone wanting to tie all its services to my G+ account if it can, that is I can't use a G+ app without it thinking that account should be used for everything. Targeted advertisements creep me out. I used to wonder if G+ was only for Doctor Who fans since that's half of all the public stuff I see, then realized that Google is filtering content based on

To date we have only Google's word that the only thing they will do with your Plus data is serve you ads.

But intelligent people realize this is a hollow promise, one that can be violated by Google themselves, or any randomhacker that manages to penetrate Google's security, or any random NSA agent that wants to gen up a letter.

And how is this different than any other company? It's not. If you're worried about these things, you shouldn't be using any online products/services from any corporation at all. In

Regular old email can't be used to publish a blog to anyone in the world who cares to read it. You could use a blogging service, but then that could be hacked by some random hacker. Or, you could get an account with a hosting service and set up your own Wordpress site, but there again some random hacker could hack it, so that won't work for you either.

He was talking about privacy violation, if everything you put on Google+ is stuff you don't mind being public then there's not going to be any violation of privacy.

The main problem with privacy on social networks, as far as I can tell, is presenting different information to different people. You might like to use your social network account to say something to a bunch of family members (perhaps talking about a reunion, or problems with a deadbeat sibling, etc.) which you don't want your employer or other acquaintances to see. Or you might like to share political things with your close friends which of course you don't want your employer or the whole world to see. S

Yes, that's entirely true. However, if your whole goal is to share information with other people, then it's by definition going to be out of your hands one way or another. If you want complete privacy, then you shouldn't be using social networks at all. The whole point of them is to share things with others. The problem is that people frequently like to compartmentalize their sharing, so the best compromise you're going to get is to use a service that allows you to do that, and has a reputation for upho

Google+, despite what a lot of people think, is very popular for companies to utilize for work projects. Hangouts is a great way to create conference calls, and since its tied into your other Google services like Drive, you can pretty much use it as a company intranet.

Letting Google, or any third party, be privy to all of your company's internal affairs is quite a precarious position to voluntarily put yourself in. This is the context in which this thread started.

Letting Google, or any third party, be privy to all of your company's internal affairs is quite a precarious position to voluntarily put yourself in.

Yes, but tons of companies do it all the time by using "cloud" services. You can't single out Google for this; if your company uses any cloud services at all, then it's making the same mistake. This also applies to the many, many large corporations who outsource their IT services. It's all-or-nothing: either never use any 3rd-party cloud services at all, and

I didn't single out Google: I specifically said "or any third party". I'll stop using the name Google and use "cloud" from now on if that'll ease your need to apologize for them.

Anyway, the solution to realizing that you've given someone else the keys to your kingdom and free access to all business negotiations and trade secrets isn't to "stop worrying about it", which is exactly my point.

Relying on a "cloud" company for all of your IT services is negligent and short-sighted. Having another company supply i

Anyway, the solution to realizing that you've given someone else the keys to your kingdom and free access to all business negotiations and trade secrets isn't to "stop worrying about it", which is exactly my point.

What other solution is there? Now that most Fortune 500 companies have outsourced their IT services, what the heck is the point of worrying about other entities having access to this information?

Relying on a "cloud" company for all of your IT services is negligent and short-sighted. Having anothe

What other solution is there? Now that most Fortune 500 companies have outsourced their IT services, what the heck is the point of worrying about other entities having access to this information?

Well you could pick a cloud provider that does not know your encryption key [spideroak.com] at all. That way you get the the advantages of collaboration without the public exposure.Or you could set up OwnCloud. [owncloud.org]

I HATE Google+ for one simple reason... Google is trying very, very hard to push it down the throats of everyone using any google services.

I used-to write reviews for Android apps in the Play Store, no problem... Now I can't do so, nor even vote an app, or a review of an app as helpful, unhelpful, or flag it as spam, without a G+ account. Nag nag nag. Strange that everything worked fine before G+, but now G+ is strictly required.

Nearly the same is true for YouTube. There is no end to the nagging about linking a G+ account. And they make it a one-click process, so you click "OK" once by accident, and you've got a G+ account populated with your private information and address book from your gmail account, and all your information is now subjected to their insanely intrusive G+ (lack-of...) privacy policy.

It goes the other way too. Ie, you can't use Google+ without also having a stupid youtube account. Clicked by accident now I have that youtube account I can't get rid of. If I upload pictures they are a part of picassa automatically. So why blame Google+ while not blaming Youtube also? Google wants a universal account which is the core problem, not Google+ itself.

I believe there are, but they're probably not widely enough used to be worthwhile for the desired purpose: to communicate.

It's not the end of the world but when someone like Linus Torvalds does it I think it sends a message that undermines the value placed on FOSS systems.

I don't think so. I do not believe that the value of Free systems is undermined by making any use of any non-Free systems or components. For example, most (if not all) banks use proprietary software for their ATMs. This does not mean that I expect every prominent figure in the Free and Open Source software world to boycott ATMs and go to a human teller when they need to get some money ou

For personal reasons, he generally does not actively browse the web from his computer; rather, he uses wget and reads the fetched pages from his e-mail mailbox, claiming to limit direct access via browsers to a few sites such as his own or those related to his work with GNU and the FSF

Actually, it sounds more like he has principles and wishes to stick to them. In a world of unprincipled people (such as people who sacrifice freedom for safety), I guess principled people would sound "crazy" to those people.

Actually, it sounds more like he has principles and wishes to stick to them

Even with all the anger and idiocy of the emacs split some time back RMS at least did not prevent the emacs developer of the time from using the code despite RMS having control of the copyright. He sticks to the principles he preaches.I've got slightly different ones and think that claiming the work of others as my own is just not on even if it is "in a good cause" such as "calling attention to gnu" with the LiGnuX and gnu/linux thi

In a world of unprincipled people (such as people who sacrifice freedom for safety), I guess principled people would sound "crazy" to those people.

Freedom is not one thing, the intentionally vague use of it just hurts your argument. RMS gives up a certain amount of freedoms for safety too so your argument is invalid anyway.

RMS is a todays hermit. He thinks that conveniences of modern life are enslaving him, so he learned to live without them and sees it as liberation. What he does is not different than refusal to use money (seen as Mammon), or many rules by which Amish or orthodox Jews live.

Well, it's better than Facebook at least.Are there FOSS alternatives to Facebook and Google+ that are actually used by a number of people?Linus uses Google+ for more than just commenting on kernels and such, he sends photos what's happening on his vacations and so forth, like a typical social network person. However as a minor celebrity he can have people follow him without him accepting friend requests and such, split people into separate groups for posting purposes (though I heard facebook evolved to do

Just because the ability for someone to run a FOSS environment is largely because of work done by Linus, doesn't mean he's actually a FOSS advocate. He's always used the best tool for the job be that open source or otherwise. Usually he'll eventually write some alternative that fits his needs better (see Git), but I doubt he plans on writing a social networking tool.

He has on occasion really pissed people off by going overboard with the "pragmatism" which degenerated into a huge mess with the Bitkeeper fiasco for example. Didn't believe the warnings he got. Eventually bailed his rep out out by coming up with Git, but that doesn't mean he wasn't just acting stupid at the time, in fact that is arguably where the Git name comes from.

The thing to keep in mind is that the Bitkeeper thing blew up due to a licence violation.

Ideals really went out the window there didn't they? "Respect no licence but mine" doesn't sound fair does it?

Forcing Linus to roll his own wasn't a victory for free software but instead the consequences of a wrecker who did not respect the very thing free software is built upon - respect for the licence terms that the person who has provided the software asks for.

Are you suggesting that the wishes of a software distributor should not be respected?To me free software looks like it is all about respecting the views of the people producing and distributing the code. To me the bitkeeper licence violation goes against that philosophy no matter what the terms of the licence are.A lack of convenience is not enough of an excuse to break the terms of a licence - or indeed to revise history if it's inconvenient.

Well I can assure you, you do not have a clue what you are talking about. You are throwing around a serious allegation without substantiation and it is pretty disgusting actually. I am sure you have some twisted concept of what "substantiation means" and you will justify yourself to the ends of the earth. Bye.

The licence violation with the bitkeeper software was proudly admitted to (the person that did it thought it was justified), so don't give me any shit about "allegations". If you didn't even know that much why are you pretending to know enough to "correct" me?

the very thing free software is built upon - respect for the licence terms that the person who has provided the software asks for.

Oh, please. Copyleft is a reaction against copyright, not an endorsement of it. Free software is built on the idea that users should have free access to the source code for the software they use and the right to modify it as they choose, and redistribute the modifications under the same terms. The only reason to choose copyleft over public domain, if you happen to fall into that camp, is the fear that some company will take the software, develop and promote it to the point that no one uses the original vers

"licence terms" which is different to the copyright you are complaining about.

The "right" to set license terms derives from copyright. Without copyright no one needs a license, so there are no license terms. Everything is public domain.

The point, in case you missed it, is that the foundation of free software is a community of developers who want software to be free, not "respect for license terms", which is something many in the free software camp do not have. Copyleft is first and foremost a pragmatic tool to be used against others who do want licenses to be respected (so that they

If it were really a community of developers who want their software to be "free" they'd release everything public domain. That's not what they want. They want software which will remain "free" which requires enforcement of the terms they place on it. Without copyright it is impossible to keep software free as in speech in any meaningful way. Anyone can modify it, keep those modifications private and contribute nothing back.

The open source driver has been fine for me. I'm not a gamer, though. For games, I don't know. In any event, since Nvidia is now beginning to contribute rather than obstruct work on Nouveau, I don't see any reason that it shouldn't be similar to the proprietary driver very soon.

very important.if you use linux, you understand that nouveau isn't about "competing" with the binary driver. It has many advanatages that come with open source such as unlimited redistribution rights, and it plays nice with other drivers, between the two making it the only option for LiveCDs and with that install CDs.

Noveau is almostly always installed by default with Xorg. It also works on a larger variety of hardware.

Nouvea is essential for getting a GUI on linux to "just work", even if the proprietary bl